Over the last 25 years, Californian fishing regulations have seen the dramatic recovery of various game fish like sea bass and rockfish to the point where they can be fished sustainably again.
Collectively known as groundfish, these stocks were serially depleted in the 1990s and early 2000s. Fish like ocean perch and bocaccio live close to the sea bed, and fishermen adopted bottom trawling nets that depleted the fish and destroyed their habitat.
By 2000, it was declared a “fisheries disaster.”
“Fishery managers at the time didn’t fully understand how slowly groundfish grow, how long they live, or how vulnerable they are to overfishing,” explained a post on the California Curated substack post. “As a result, catch limits were set too high.”
In response to the collapse, a wide variety of measures were undertaken to try and give the groundfish stocks the time, space, and peace, to rebuild themselves. It started, according to California Curated, with a trawl vessel buyback program, which spent some $46 million compensating fishermen for investing in trawlers to take advantage of the poorly-set catch limits.
Next, for the one-fourth of trawlers that remained after the buyback program, the Trawl Catch Share Program mandated onboard observers to confirm the fishermen were abiding by historical catch quotas.
Various restrictions in the size of trawling gear, and requirements for bycatch-reducing devices followed, in advance of a near-total trawling ban in most California fisheries. Rockfish and cowcod conservation areas were set up in breeding hot beds, and by 2011, most of the more than-90 managed groundfish stocks were recovering or rebuilt, some years ahead of earlier projections.
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The only California native gamefish that remains overfished is the yelloweye rockfish, but even this is slated for recovery in 2029.
The Marine Stewardship Council has certified many of these groundfish stocks as being sustainably managed, capable of growing year-over-year while feeding the coastal populations of California.
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In spring 2024, the NOAA released its annual State of the Stocks report that showed that 94% of fish stocks in the US oceanic and gulf waters are not being overfished. This was at the time an all-time high of sustainability, and would no doubt have included these California groundfish stocks which the state has done such a good job replenishing.
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